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The majority of the trees I pruned back this weekend are Crape Myrtles. Yesterday afternoon I started to worry that maybe what I was doing wasn’t correct or in some way would damage the trees. I spoke to Mom last night and she assured me that it sounded like I was doing it right, and that even if I wasn’t Crape Myrtles can handle quite a bit. Normally I’m pretty good about doing my research beforehand, but in this case I didn’t really know where to start… I wasn’t even sure what kind of trees/shrubs they were until Mom said, “Yeah, they’re Crape Myrtles.”

This morning I found the following links:

Pruning Crape Myrtle
Crepe Myrtle Varieties
How to Prune (Crape Myrtles)

Apparently I’m doing things right. I think I might trim back a couple of trees to even fewer main trunks as I prefer the more tree-like appearance to the bush-like look. I was worried about taking too much away all at once, but these trees haven’t been touched in so long they need major attention.

Next weekend I’ll take another run at the Crape Myrtles and then dig out the shrubs on the side of the house. There’s one in front of the side deck that is absolutely horrible looking. It’s all twisted and gnarled and deserves to be finally put to rest.